Κυριακή, 8 Νοεμβρίου 2009

Dance With Me: The Autumn Teen Sound (Nuggets From The Golden State series)

The second instalment in the great series of '60s West Coast rock - Nuggets From The Golden State. Dance With Me turns the spotlight on the teen pop combos that recorded for the Autumn label. Autumn Records was the brainchild of Bay area DJs and music promoters Tom Donahue and Bobby Mitchell. Their enthusiasm for the rock music that was transforming the West Coast of America (itself a response and a product of The Beatles and the "British Pop Invasion" of the '60s, generally) led them to record many of the groups on the music scene at the time, among them The Vejtables, Mojo Men and The Knight Riders. Through their DJing they met Sylvester Stewart (later to reincarnate as 'Sly Stone' of Sly & The Family Stone) and he honed his production skills at Autumn, encouraging, even dictating his own ideas to, the individual group's sound. Both Donahue and Mitchell provided the impetus to sign bands but they quickly lost interest in the acts, leaving them to Sly, and his remarkable production talent, to coax the best from them.

The good humoured Dance With Me by The Mojo Men was very successful! regionally and reached No 61 on the national charts. The much-anthologised 'punk' of I by The Knight Riders is testimony to a hell-raising band whose popularity on the peninsula was at teen spots like Big Al's Gas House. The Vejtables were the most Beatle-obsessed of the Bay Area bands and both sides of their Mersey beat-flavoured single I Still Love You are included here. The single only reached No 84 nationally but it got them support spots to The Yardbirds and The Beach Boys as well as TV slots on American Bandstand and Where The Action Is. Among the little known items and bands is The Bundles. Their garage punk on Mark My Words and Watch Me Girl deserves a wider audience. As an added bonus, 17 of the 30 tracks on Dance With Me are previously unreleased and the compilation, sleeve note and rare pics by Alec Palao of American magazine Cream Puff War.(From the Ace / Big Beat Records)

San Francisco in the early 1960s was a haven for the beatniks who were seeking out the real Beat Generation poets and writers, jazz players and artists. The commercial folk scene was already in full bloom with the Kingston Trio, and local favorite Johnny Mathis was crooning pop ballads.

After the Beatles hit America, many bands started up hoping to be the Bay Area's answer to the Merseybeat sound. They in turn inspired a number of loud "garage pop" bands, some of which were inspirations for the punk movement of the 1970s, and a new breed of "garage psychedelic pop" bands, some of which are represented in this show. Many of these psychedelic bands evolved into rock groups that carried the San Francisco sound to the rest of the country and Europe.